If you don't remember life before the Internet, you may not realize how much harder it was back then for young people to find a community who shared your interests outside of mainstream pop culture.

I distinctly recall being teased quite mercilessly in high school for admitting in front of the class that my ideal Saturday night was staying home and watching Tom Baker Doctor Who reruns on PBS. (I can't say much has changed.)

Which is why, once I'd found friends who liked to quote Star Wars and watch Japanese cartoons, we especially cherished the things that brought us together. Such as comic books.

Especially when those comic books had something really cool in them.

Like that time Batman punched out Guy Garner in Justice League #5.

Like Blue Beetle, we talked about that forever. Which is why, despite having very little Booster Gold content — he's present but off panel — this is one of my very favorite pages of all time.

(Seriously. Why isn't this a movie yet, Warner Bros?)

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I'm sure I'm not the only one who saw the Mess Hall in the Justice League Hall of Justice in last week's Superman: Kal-El's Return Special #1 and thought, "That looks just like Warriors!"

If you don't remember Warriors, it was a bar filled with memorabilia from Guy Gardner's crime-fighting career. (Warriors is not to be confused with Planet Krypton, the superhero-themed restaurant found on multiple Earths.)

Booster Gold visited Warriors on several occasions, most notably on December 5, 1995, when Guy Gardner threw the DCU's largest Christmas party in the pages of Guy Gardner: Warrior #39.

As you can see, almost everyone who was anyone in 1995 made this party, including Booster in his Extreme Justice-era Mark IV power armor. It's no tuxedo, but it *was* keeping Booster alive at the time, so come as you are, I guess.

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Once upon a time, Guy Gardner was an insufferable jerk who was so insufferable that he was actually kicked out of the Green Lantern Corps. Guy being Guy, that didn't stop him for long. In fact, he took on the entire Corps just to get his hand on Sinestro's yellow power ring, which, being Sinestro's ring, had a few quirks of its own, as Guy discovered in Guy Gardner #2, released on this date 29 years ago today.

But that's not what's important about that issue. What's important about that issue was Booster Gold's 1990s hair!

I'd sell my soul to Neron for hair like that.

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Long before they became breakout stars on the Batman: The Long Halloween, the team of Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale honed their long-form revisionist mysteries style on Challengers of the Unknown.

The limited series focuses on the aftermath of an unintentional tragedy that disbanded the titular Silver Age super team. Booster Gold never appeared in any of the mini-series' 8-issues, but Skeets did. Kind of.

Challengers of the Unknown #5, 1991

Metal Men? Inferior Five? Ragman? Brother Power the Geek? That's quite an odd assortment of lesser-known DC heroes. And that's Guy's point. When he made the statement in 1991, those characters had been barely seen for years.

Other than a single panel cameo alongside other Silver Age castaways in Millennium #8 (1988), the Challengers hadn't been seen since Crisis on Infinite Earths in 1986, and few of the others had done much better.

In fact, the only character Guy lists who had accrued any significant post-Crisis continuity was Skeets, who had been the sidekick of DC's first post-Crisis hero in 1986. Skeets was mothballed after the cancellation of Booster Gold volume 1 in 1988 and had ever since been stored in a JLI closet (as revealed in Adventures of Superman #476, 1991).

So while it seems like Guy is just being a jerk to reporter Harold Moffet, I like to think he's really concerned about the missing Skeets' welfare. What a good Guy!

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We still don't have Booster Gold: the Movie lighting up marquees, but that doesn't mean that there's no news about Booster Gold in pictures. Two pieces from recent movies news reports:

1. Booster Gold was in Shazam!

That's Shazam! director David Sandberg responding with tongue held firmly in cheek to a question on Twitter. Before you laugh too hard, know that this might be the only way we ever get to see Booster Gold on the big screen.

2. Booster's first opponent, Blackguard, will be in Suicide Squad 2.

Booster Gold and Blackguard shared the cover to Booster Gold #1, so how is it that the minor villain will make it into movies before our hero? DC and Warner Bros must be taking Booster's "Greatest Hero You've Never Heard Of" tag seriously.

To be fair, Blackguard wasn't just a Booster Gold enemy. He was a minor player in the long-forgotten Underworld Unleashed event, accepting Neron's offer to become "The Human Killing Spree" and running afoul of Guy Gardner's clone, Joe. Blackguard didn't join the Suicide Squad until 2008. Spoiler alert: he didn't survive that experience.

For more pics of Davidson as Blackguard, follow the tweet's link to dailymail.co.uk. (Don't waste time worrying that Davidson is a little small for the part. Blackguard, like Booster, gains his strength from his power suit.)

UPDATE 2019-10-15: As Steven points out in the comments, it appears that Nathan Fillion, not Pete Davidson, will be playing Blackguard. That's very interesting, in part because Fillion looks more naturally like the comics incarnation of the character and partly because of the long history of fans wanting Fillion to play Booster Gold.

UPDATE 2021-08-05: The movie has finally been released, and it is definitely Pete Davidson in the role of Blackguard.

Thanks for the tweets, tipsters.

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